The Streets of London
Cumming Goes Undercover, More Fodder for Potter, and Delahunt Reaches for the Orange
With all eyes focusing intently on the latest deals from the London Book Fair, we thought we’d swivel the periscope toward what’s hitting the stores this summer in the UK. For starters, Charles Cumming’s A Spy By Nature (May, Michael Joseph) is a tautly paced, tightly plotted novel about the new face of spying: industrial espionage. The protagonist, Alec Milius, is approached by MI6, and the first quarter of the novel is a detailed and compelling look at the process of reinventing oneself as a British spy. The (extremely promotable — PT has seen a photo) author was himself approached by MI6 upon his university graduation, and the narrative has a convincing insider’s tone. With a blurb from Robert Harris calling him the new le Carré, this one is sure to have legs. See Lucas Alexander Whitley for rights.
There’s certainly nothing covert about Simon Prosser, publisher at Hamish Hamilton, who can do no wrong at the moment. With Zadie Smith under his belt, and having acquired the smoking novel of the fair (Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist from Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown), he’s currently publishing the brilliant Ali Smith’s new novel, Hotel World. The latest work from the prize-winning Scottish short story writer is set in an English seaside hotel and focuses on the strange circumstances surrounding the death of one of the five characters in the novel, examined through the eyes of the other four characters. The prose is startlingly fresh and original, and the author’s eye for detail makes for a high-impact read. Newly crowned prince of literary fiction Jim Crace declares, “I doubt I shall read a tougher or more affecting novel this year.” All rights are handled by David Godwin.
The Harry Potter boom continues: a quick mention here for Philip Pullman, who has at last gone onto the bestseller list with the third part of the His Dark Materials series, The Amber Spyglass. Pullman now has deals in 21 languages — watch out Joanne Rowling. (Incidentally, Peter Tallick of Weidenfeld & Nicolson has just commissioned a piece of non-fiction about the psychology of Harry Potter — Chicken Soup for the parent’s soul?) In the same sphere, also set in a recognizable but curiously skewed England and written by Jasper Fforde is a series of books that have crossover appeal to an adult/young adult market (sound familiar?). “There is another 1985, somewhere in the could-have-been, where Wales is a Socialist Republic, dodos are available in home-cloning kits, the Crimean war is 131 years old, and the ending to Jane Eyre is less than satisfactory. This is the 1985 of Thursday Next, a literary detective without equal, fear, or boyfriend.” Hodder has commissioned two and will publish the first in June, and Terry Pratchett declares he’s going to be “watching my back.” See Janklow & Nesbit for rights.
Back in the real world, but set a little further afield, two China-related novels are looking like strong contenders for the summer’s big reads. The first, sold by Annette Green at last year’s book fair, is Justin Hill’s The Drink and the Dream Teahouse, which does have a US deal, and second is Sid Smith’s debut Something Like a House, for which the agent, Caroline Dawnay, says she’s never seen such reviews for a first novel. Set against the austere times of the cultural revolution in China, James Stuart Fraser, a private in the British Army, deserts and ends up spending 35 years “among the unshiftable Chinese.” Many of those years are spent in the wretched poverty of a village of the despised Miao people, where life revolves around the solitary buffalo. The tedium of Fraser’s rural subsistence (existence is too strong a term) is evoked in a controlled prose, filled with convincing detail. It’s an extraordinary leap of imagination for the writer, a copy-editor at the (London) Times, who has never been to China. Rights are still available from Peters, Fraser & Dunlop.
Meanwhile, Meaghan Delahunt’s novel In the Blue House (Bloomsbury) lands on the recently announced Orange Prize longlist. The book covers the years that Trotsky spends with Frida Kahlo in Mexico, and flashes back to Trotsky and Stalin’s childhood, building up a portrait of Stalinist rule at the height of the purges. The author, an Australian short story writer, dropped out of college to become a communist recruiter on the factory floor. Rights have been sold only in Greece so far; see Bloomsbury UK.
Sceptre’s Orange hope lies with Fred and Edie by Jill Dawson. The novel is based on a 1922 trial of a woman tried for conspiring with her young lover Frederick Bywaters to murder her husband, Percy. The trial took place in front of heaving crowds at the Old Bailey, who thrilled to a story of an illicit love affair, a back-street abortion, domestic violence, murder, and the prospect of a double execution. Drawing on newspaper reports as well as letters by Edie to Freddy, the author creates an intimate voice for Edie in a story of one woman’s attempts to defy convention. Hodder controls world rights, and a film based on the book, Another Life starring Natasha Little and Ion Gruffedd, will be released (in the UK) next month. We also note that many of the big hitters are returning to the shelves this spring, including Jonathan Coe with The Rotters Club and Pat Barker with Border Crossing. Talk of a hotly contested Booker has already begun.
It’s adieu to a long reign on the Australian list for The Blue Day Book, a small-format, picture-based book containing cute and humorous photos of animals with captions lightheartedly illustrating the misery of human existence. Working off a similar market to the Little Book of Calm series, which scored huge successes for Penguin worldwide, the book was originally turned down by nearly everybody, reports agent Al Zuckerman. Published in the US by Andrews McMeel with a first printing of some 20,000 copies, it was jumped on first by Walden buyer Linda Jones for counter display. The rush began and sales at Walden alone now stand at over 100,000, with over 300,000 in print. Meanwhile, sales are just taking off at Target and look set to be huge. Book two, Dear Mom, published in March, is already over 75,000 copies and September is set for the third, Looking for Mr. Right.
A brief welcome to Greece, where Louis de Bernières continues to reign supreme (in both languages). Thanks to Eleftheroudakis bookstores, Greece’s finest and best-established chain, details of the hottest sellers there will be forthcoming next month.
